ABSTRACT
Introduction In Geography, there has been a rapid increase in the use of mobile technology-assisted research (Ricketts Hein, Evans, & Jones, 2008) and learning (Lynch et al., 2008). The term “mobile technology” is widely used, and covers a wide range of hardware that can easily be used “on the move” such as digital cameras, laptops or tablets, digital sensors, simple and more complex global positioning systems (GPSs), mobile phones (or cell phones), personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mp3 players. Importantly in a geographical context, generic devices may be coupled with the location-awareness provided by GPS, either directly or indirectly. Further, we are increasingly seeing the coalescence of functionality within one highly portable device; the “smartphone”, for example, refers to a unit that is currently likely to contain a camera, GPS, accelerometer and digital voice recording function, in addition to the standard functionality of a mobile telephone and PDA.
